by Kenneth F. Sheets
The Origins of Externalization
Externalization Defined
The externalization of religion is the doing of any kind of religious activity as a requirement of a being, or some kind of “religion” associated with a being, whether that being is real or imagined, apart from a full internalized perception of the person and nature of the being which the religion claims to represent. The externalization of true religion, that is, the criteria of the Creator’s design for the interrelationship between humans and Himself, is mimicked to various extents in virtually all religions where obeisance to some deity is required. Indeed, externalization occurs in non-religious relationships between individual humans, especially those between authorities and their subordinates. Though not so obvious in the initial violation of Adam, human externalizations of their relationship to God have existed since the violation of that first human. It has even affected the “true religion” intended by the Creator to the extent that virtually all present-day religious activity, in all the various religions claiming to “worship God,” has now been “humanized,” that is, humans have made their relationship to God a matter of doing “religious” practices and appearing to hold to certain “religious” concepts in ways which make their “worship” visible to and discernible by other humans, themselves included.
Indeed, the “doing” and “appearing to hold” have become so deeply entrenched in the human concepts of a relationship to God that even the “doers” and the “appearers to hold” believe that their externalized “worship” is the very definition of true worship. Modern “worship of God,” even among so-called “Bible believers,” typically manifests itself to be just as devoid of a full internalized perception of God as was the “false worship” of Israel which the LORD God Himself decried through Isaiah. As it was in that day, it remains: humans “draw near to Him with their mouth,” that is, externally, but “their heart is far from Him,” that is, internally, and they do those “precepts which are taught by other humans.” Such a contradiction of the design of God should be obvious, and correction sought, but humans “possess authority.”
Adam’s Externalization
Adam, as a being who walked with God, could not have comprehended living an existence where he would not have a continuous and complete sense not only of the presence of the Creator but also the total harmony of the relationship between them. Nothing existed either in concept or experience which adversely affected his interaction with the God who had made him. Thus, when God expressed a specific criterion of His design, instructing him to not eat of a certain tree, the man possessed no concept of what violation of that criterion or any other criterion of God’s design would bring. He knew the design to not eat, and he knew that the condition “dying you will die” would result if the design were violated, but death had not yet been experienced.
Within the design of God, Adam had many times already applied the Creator’s design, assimilating information, correlating it to his world and the design of God, and then making wise decisions based upon his correlations. With no propensity toward violation, his decision to eat from the forbidden tree was, in his mind, but another application of what he was designed to do.
Adam recorded the basic element of the Creator’s design (Genesis 1:26-28), expressing that the Creator had built into each human both a measure of authority and a sense of that authority. The human, thus, thought himself to possess sufficient authority, authority delegated to him by the Creator, to evaluate the conditions related to eating of the tree, but he exceeded that authority and reached a conclusion that superseded a clear criterion of God’s design. The Creator had designed him to perform such evaluations and reach conclusions; they were to be a part of everyday life, but God had never delegated to Adam any degree of authority which allowed him to violate any criterion of His design. Thus, Adam violated the design of God, and he and Eve entered a new condition of their existence. They had come to know experientially both the nature of a violation of the Creator’s perfect person and the alienation which violation brought.
Cain’s Externalization
Certainly, Adam instructed all his descendants regarding the conditions of their human existence and how his own violation of the Creator’s design had disastrously affected the perfect existence he and Eve had originally known, but Cain, following his father’s example for whatever reasons, thought himself of sufficient authority to determine how he personally, and perhaps as well those under his influence, should relate to the criteria of God’s design for his existence. He thought that he possessed both the ability and the authority to “interpret” the Creator’s revelation as he saw fit, and he thought himself to possess autonomous authority, as though he determined for himself the criteria of “good and evil,” a condition which made him view anyone standing against his interpretation as a danger and a threat to his autonomy.
Truly, Cain recognized the necessity and rightness of acknowledging the superior position of the Creator, and he knew that God had established that humans would present to Him an offering, a physical manifestation, a demonstration, of that knowledge, but he thought himself worthy or sufficient to decide just how he would act out that acknowledgment. He even recognized the rightness of acknowledging God as the originator of all the means of provision for human needs and, thus, he returned some of that provision to God in the form of an offering. God had given, and he would acknowledge that giving by offering the same.
The only problem was that God had specified the nature of the offering,[4] and man had no choicein the matter. Man had no authority to determine how he would relate to the Creator or to anything else in the creation; God had never delegated that authority to any created being. The Creator had set the criteria for every function and interaction of everything that existed, but Cain and many others in history, when faced with various conditions of life, would reject the Creator’s design and usurp to themselves the authority to determine how they would interact with those conditions.
Cain thought that his manner of mixing aspects of the design of God with aspects of his own design should have been acceptable to God. He was, after all, seeking to conform to the Creator’s design for proper acknowledgement of his dependence upon God, but Cain thought that he, finite man, should be able to determine the criteria of acceptable worship of the infinite, transcendent Creator. Cain’s view of God was greatly in error and led him to reject even the Creator’s means of reconciliation, and, as occurs whenever man departs from the design criteria, the wisdom, of God, that error led him and his descendants into a way of life characterized by failure and destruction.
Instead of conforming to the Creator’s authority and design when the Creator manifested the acceptability of Abel’s accurate offering and the unacceptable nature of his own inaccurate offering, Cain chose to destroy the individual whose conformity and accuracy had made his own deviation and inaccuracy even more obvious. Rather than conform to the design of God, as Abel had done, Cain chose to reduce the matter to a purely human level, making the nature of the offering appear to be little more than a simple human choice. Like Abel, he possessed authority to decide the nature of his offering, but unlike Abel, he had chosen to exercise his authority and exceed the Creator’s boundary, His specific criteria, for a proper offering. In so doing, Cain made the criteria of God’s design appear to be subject to human perception and, thus, to human authority.
In his mind, in his perception, on the human level, Cain saw Abel as the individual who, by his conformity to God’s design, had made his own offering appear unacceptable. With no way of changing or eliminating the original criteria for offerings, as God had established them, his only recourse was against the human whose desire to conform to “good” had exposed his own desire to conform to “evil.” Thus, Cain chose to exercise authority over the life of his brother, and, once again, usurped to himself an authority which had never been delegated to him and which he did not possess.
Externalization of Others in Scripture
Many individuals throughout human history have similarly usurped authority over the lives of other humans for the purpose of justifying themselves and imposing upon others their own will, their own perspective of “right,” or what, in their estimation and authority, should be “right”:
Lĕmĕk, the fifth generation from Cain, over the men who hurt him,
Esau over Jacob for receiving the blessing he had previously despised,
Jacob’s older sons over Joseph as his rightness posed a threat to them,
Jesse’s older sons over David for his courage which exposed their own cowardice,
David over Uriah to justify his obtaining Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife,
Jews and others of the NT era over believers who exposed the externality of their “religion,”
The older brother over the prodigal for wrongly intruding on his portion,
Husbands over wives and families in order to fill their own concepts of right,
Etc., etc., etc.
Externalization in Churches
Externalization, that is, the action of humans to remake religion according to their own understanding, has effectively made the true expression of God nonexistent in most churches, even in many that represent themselves as “Bible-believing.” These churches have developed and established their own patterns of activities associated with “worship” and their “interactions” with God, and through the ease of repeated practice, that pattern has in turn become, in their eyes, the very definition of worship, and the fulfillment of the pattern has become the fulfillment of worship. The heart of individual, personal interaction with the Creator God has been lost; the externalization has become complete, and the “doing” of activities deemed to indicate “worship” has become the measure of one’s relationship to God. With a world of humans looking on and evaluating the validity of “the faith,” those who engage themselves in this type of ministry, if they ever knew the difference, become “dumbed down” to what is no more than a vestige, at best, of true worship . . . and the perfect God is represented as imperfect to all who observe.
Externalization of Prayer
“Prayer,” especially public “prayer,” has become one of the most obviously externalized aspects of worship. Whether offered by a “lay person” who is clearly performing an action unfamiliar to him or by a “pastor” who uses “prayer” as just another means of communicating to his hearers what he wants them to know or do, “prayer” has largely become a recitation of words offered to conform to the minds of those hearing the “prayer.” When this occurs, prayer has ceased to be what God designed it to be: communication with Him. He designed prayer to be a personal communication between Him and one of His individual human creations.
Though others may hear, and be edified as a result, the praying individual does not use prayer to communicate to other humans; his prayer is for the One who created all that exists; he is talking, conversing, with God, the One to whom he has been reconciled by the blood of the Son. Thus, the terminology used by a praying individual will be consistent with that purpose. It will be a personal discussion between God and a human regarding something of concern in the life of the praying individual. The human, first of all, recognizes the reality of his relationship to God, including the price that God Himself paid to make such communication possible, and all that he “asks” or “seeks” of God is subordinate to the design of God, a design which is the Creator’s own perfect representation of Himself.
Perhaps one of the most destructive effects of externalized public prayer is its effect on private, personal prayer. After having learned to pray for the sake of humans who hear, individuals often transfer the same perspective and terminology into their own private communications with God. They even adopt certain forms, practices, body positions, locations, etc., which over time become defining elements of prayer to that individual, and he does not recognize his need or ability to communicate with the Creator at every moment of the day.
The “forms” of prayer, that is, those external practices associated with “praying,” do not determine whether or not prayer has actually occurred. The conditions may be “right,” and the “prayer” may use “all the right words,” pronounced in a properly “reverent” manner, but, if the individual is not actually conscious that he is communicating with the transcendent Creator God, then all that is done is worthless. Just as in the situation with Cain’s humanized, externalized offering, God does not conform Himself to man’s concept of “acceptable”; He requires man to conform to that which He has established to be right and true.
Externalization Causes Inaccurate Knowledge and Understanding of God
Another result of externalization is a diminished, inaccurate knowledge and understanding of God and His design among believers. The Creator designed His human creatures to receive the truths of His revelation of Himself and to internalize those truths, allowing them to bring every thought and intent of a person’s innermost being into a conformity to His design. Then, in this conformity, the person continues to seek and grow in the knowledge and understanding of God, and this, in turn, results in an ever more accurate perception of the Creator and His design. The primary issue in all this is that, at every point in the way, from the earliest and most basic knowledge of God, the information coming to that person must be completely accurate in its representation of God. If not, the person’s concept of God becomes erroneous, twisted, perverted, moving the individual to represent the Creator according to his own inaccurate concept and misleading all others touched by his life.